Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

July 31, 2011  Proper 13A by the Rev. Kate Ekrem
Matthew 14:13-21

Sarah Dylan Breuer has observed, "Have you ever wondered why it is that, when we gather as a church to remember Jesus, we do it with a meal? If you think about it, it really could have been anything. We could have built statutes to remember Jesus, or held a dance. We could have made it a poetry reading, a teach-in, a weekly golf tournament -- but we didn't. When we gather as a church, our central act together in remembrance of Jesus is to have a meal."

In seminary I had sort of a left wing professor who said the symbol of Christianity should not be the cross, but the loaves and fishes.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 10A July 10 by the Rev. Kate Ekrem

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Did you notice that our Gospel reading skips around a bit? We leave out verses 9-18 of this chapter and hear Jesus’s parable of the Sower, then skip to the explanation of the parable. In between, in the part that our lectionary leaves out, the disciples ask Jesus, “why do you speak in parables? They’re kind of hard to understand!” And Jesus’ response indicates that parables are not supposed to be easy to understand or easily explainable, but instead that we have to be in the right frame of mind to hear them. So the second half of our reading, the explanation, was likely not part of Jesus’ teaching

Sermon for The Third Sunday After Pentecost by Bob King

The American Flag in Christian Worship - Bob King July 3rd, 2011

Zechariah 9:9-12 “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! ... Lo your king comes to you; ... humble and riding on a donkey, ...”

Romans 7:15-25a “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate ... “

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 “To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you and you did not dance; we waited, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds ...”

O Lord, give us inquiring and discerning hearts, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy in all your works.

Last Advent, we had removed the American and Episcopal Church flags from the sanctuary to make room for the mitten tree, and no one thought to put them back until a parishioner mentioned it this spring. When the flags were returned, other parishioners questioned if they belonged. This exchange encouraged Kate to open a conversation about the flags with the congregation, and what better way to start than with a sermon on Fourth of July weekend,

Ascension Sunday

June 5, 2011, by the Rev. Kate Ekrem

Ascension Day is kind of a funny little church festival, tucked away at the end of Easter and so close to Pentecost it often gets overlooked. Maybe we also think it’s funny because of the funny pictures it has inspired. There is a whole genre of Renaissance paintings of the disciples looking up in the air, confused looking, at some little white clouds with Jesus feet poking through. That’s all you see of Jesus, just his feet as he ascends into heaven. If that’s our image of Ascension Day no wonder it gets overlooked. But actually, what Ascension Day is about is pretty important.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday in Easter

May 29 2011 by the Rev. Kate Ekrem

“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone” – 1 Peter 3:15

Warning: today’s sermon is interactive! Mentally prepare yourself for talking with your neighbor in your pew.

Do you have an elevator speech? You know what I mean, the 30 second or 1 minute pitch about what’s important to you, when someone asks “what’s up with you” on an elevator? It’s generally what you’re selling or what you want your boss to think you’re doing in? I used to work in book publishing, where people actually did have elevator speeches. It was a tall office building, and everyone was always lobbying the boss

Sermon for Third Sunday in Easter

May 8, 2011 by the Rev. Kate Ekrem
Luke 24:13-35

Imagine you are Cleopas and his companion, walking during a spring evening towards Emmaus, a few miles down the road from Jerusalem. I always like to imagine that Cleopas’ companion is actually the wife of Cleopas mentioned a few times in the Gospels, that perhaps this is a married couple.  And perhaps they are having a little marital argument or discussion as they walk down the road, talking over what the heck just

Good Friday Sermon

Good Friday 2011

The Rev. Kate Ekrem

Last night we stripped the altar, took all the usual things out of the church. Our service today is also sort of bare bones, missing many elements, the others in an unfamiliar order. It too is stripped down, until nothing is left but the cross. In a little bit we’ll bring the cross forward and have the opportunity to kneel in front of it, or venerate it however we feel moved.

            It’s not always a comfortable thing to do, facing the cross is hard for us, but how much more emotional and terrible it was for those who were with Jesus that scary night, that awful day. By the time Jesus got to the cross, most of his friends were gone. Peter wasn’t there, most of the 12 were in hiding. Jesus’ mother was there. As any mother would be.

Sermon for Fourth Sunday in Lent

Lent 4 April 3, 2011, The Rev. Kate Ekrem

Scripture of the day is here.

Early Christians took baptismal preparation very seriously. Today, at our most perfunctory it can be just a quick meeting in the pastor’s study, but in those days it was three years of study and learning. All leading up to baptism at Easter, almost always at the Easter Vigil, the crown and pinnacle of the church year. The scripture passages we read on the Sundays of Lent were their textbook. And this story of the healing of the man born blind was one of the most important of the texts they studied. We know this because it appears more than 7 times in early catacomb art, generally as an illustration of baptism.

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